Leducate Explains: Equality in Legal Practice
Hint - key terms are defined. Just click on the blue words to see their definitions!
This article aims to explain the UK’s laws on equality in the workplace, and more specifically, the legal industry. It will explain the importance of upholding these values, and provide some case studies.
Introduction
Equality and diversity are key tenets of a workforce in today’s world, and there are laws and policies in place to ensure their values are upheld across all industries, including the legal sector. Legal professionals have obligations to promote equality and diversity in the industry, including at the recruitment level, and these policies can bring about positive results for legal professionals in various ways.
Overview of UK Equality Laws
UK legislation ensures that equality and diversity are protected and promoted. The Equality Act 2010 protects people against discrimination in employment, and finds it illegal to discriminate against someone for several listed characteristics. These include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. It is also illegal to discriminate against someone for being pregnant, or for breastfeeding.
When trying to work out whether something is discrimination, the law is very clear that the characteristic (so age, sex, or race, for example) must be the cause of less favourable treatment (s13(1) The Equality Act 2010). This is called direct discrimination. Alternatively, indirect discrimination is where a certain practice, provision, or rule is put in place that is discriminatory towards a protected characteristic (s19(1) The Equality Act 2010).
The Legal Services Act 2007 is a piece of legislation outlining the promotion of equality and diversity in specifically the legal sector. It sets out the objectives which include ‘improving access to justice’ and ‘encouraging an independent, strong, diverse, and effective legal profession’. This Act states also that the Legal Services Board has an obligation to promote these objectives through their actions.
Obligations of Legal Professionals
Legal professionals have specific obligations under UK law to promote equality and diversity within their practice.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) sets out regulations and guidance for solicitors beyond the strict word of the law. These focus on promoting equality and diversity in all areas of the business and the workforce. For example, the SRA requires all regulated firms, no matter their size, to report and publish data on the diversity of their workforce every two years.
Barristers must adhere to similar obligations. Section 47 of The Equality Act 2010 outlines the ways in which barristers must behave towards pupils to ensure that diversity is promoted and encouraged at the Bar. Barristers must not commit any harassment, victimisation, or discrimination when offering pupillage. These rules apply to a barrister’s clerk too.
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Remedies to workplace discrimination
If an individual feels that they have been discriminated against at work, they can:
Talk to their employer informally,
Talk to Acas, Citizens Advice or a trade union representative (if part of a union),
Use a mediator or ‘alternative dispute resolution’,
Make a claim to the Employment Tribunal. If successful, they can receive compensation. It is the responsibility of the employer or the business to prove that they have not discriminated against the individual in such cases. There are specific rules and time bars to making a complaint to the Employment Tribunal.
Equality in Recruitment and Employment
When it comes to the recruitment and employment practices within law firms, there are laws to ensure that this is fair and done without prejudice. Employers must ensure that they do not unlawfully discriminate when advertising a role or selecting someone for that role.
Employers are encouraged in legislation to take ‘positive action’ to encourage applications from under-represented groups. This might include implementing flexible hours for those who have caring responsibilities or hosting open days for under-represented groups. This is lawful so long as it doesn’t mean less favourable treatment of other people; this would be ‘positive discrimination’.
Access to Justice
Beyond just fulfilling their legal obligations, law firms and other legal businesses have a vested interest in ensuring that they are recruiting and promoting diverse talent.
Equal and diverse workplaces can create happier and more motivated employees. A diverse environment may also widen the talent pool applying to that firm, which can in turn increase the reputation of the business. Diversity of backgrounds can lead to diversity of thought, minimising the risk of group thinking.
Diversity in the legal industry is important because it helps clients feel that themselves and their needs will be understood. It can also provide clients with improved choice and an overall more comfortable experience when dealing with the stresses of the law.
Image: via Sora Shimazaki on Pexels
Case Studies
The following case studies use statistics and data from the Legal Services Board (LSB), the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). References can be found at the end of this article!
Whilst there have been improvements in the diversity of UK law, there is still a long way to go. For example, even though only an average of 7% of the UK’s population were privately educated, 40% UK-educated notaries, 37% of barristers, and 21% of solicitors attended private schools (LSB).
There has been a rise in the proportion of women in law firms, from 48% in 2015 to 53% in 2023, but only 32% of full-equity partners (the most senior level) are women, representing continuing disparities at the higher end of the pay-scale (SRA).
From 2015 to 2023, the proportion of lawyers with disabilities in the UK increased from 3% to 6%. However, this is still a long way from the overall proportion of the UK workforce who live with disabilities which stands at 16% (SRA).
Whilst women in 2022 made up 41% of junior barristers in the UK, only 18% of QCs at the time were women (MoJ). Similarly, amongst judges, whilst 52% of tribunal judges are women, only 35% of court judges are women and women make up only 20% of Heads of Division in the judiciary (MoJ). This shows that women tend to make up a smaller percentage of the judiciary as seniority of the post increases.
Conclusion
UK law sets out that equality and diversity in the workforce is a legal requirement for all industries, including the legal industry. By adhering to these rules, legal professionals not only avoid potentially lengthy and costly penalties but also play a crucial role in crafting a legal sector that is more inclusive and representative of the population it serves, and one which upholds the principles of justice, fairness, and equality.
Written by Susannah Castledine
Glossary box
Direct Discrimination - treating someone with a protected characteristic less favourably than others
Indirect Discrimination - when there is a policy that applies in the same way for everybody but disadvantages a group of people who share a protected characteristic, and you are disadvantaged as part of this group.
Positive Discrimination - a form of discrimination that favours someone by treating them differently in a positive way